


Pourquoi me réveiller (why do you wake me now?)

by penguinparity



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Confessions, Flirting, M/M, Origins, Secrets, Technology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-04
Updated: 2011-04-04
Packaged: 2017-10-21 14:07:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/226032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penguinparity/pseuds/penguinparity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes we have to write our own stories. The way things are going; Eames might end up writing Arthur’s too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pourquoi me réveiller (why do you wake me now?)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [faorism](https://archiveofourown.org/users/faorism/gifts).



> The title is a bit of a play on words. An origin story is also sometimes called a Pourquoi story. It’s also the title of an Aria in the opera Werther by Jules Massenet. More notes at the end.

“How do you think our boy here got into the dreaming business?” Eames had asked one slow afternoon as they were waiting for intel on a mark to come back.

“Not your boy,” Arthur replied, not looking up from where he’d been dismantling their PASIV device. Cobb merely raised his eyebrows in a fashion that suggested he was silently laughing at their forger.

“You and your lovely wife seduced him into a life of crime and runaway romance, didn’t you? You scoundrel.” Eames smirked. Cobb laughed as if the idea was hilarious to him until Mal finally wandered back into the room demanding to know what was so funny.

“What are you doing, mon cher?” Mal asked Arthur after Cobb refused to explain. She leaned over Arthur’s shoulder, resting a hand proprietorially at the base of his neck.

“Fixing it,” Arthur replied, not bothering to look up.

“I wasn’t aware we had broken the device,” Mal said smoothly.

\---

“Hmm, no, I’ve revised my previous position. You were clearly not blindly led into this life,” Eames shouted over intermittent gunfire several months and two jobs later. “You’re quite the consummate criminal. Perhaps you’re the youngest child from a Mob family in the Americas, branching out from the family business in hopes of making a name for yourself.”

“Is this really the time to be narrating whatever hyperbolic origin story you’ve constructed for me?” Arthur asked. He paused a beat before whipping out around the corner to shoot out the light across the street. A shot rang out and Arthur returned fire, followed by a strangled cry and thud moments later.

“Let’s go, more might be coming,” Arthur said, his gun lowering only slightly. There were only so many places to hide from gunfire without drawing all kinds of the wrong attention on an island like Malta. They’d managed to flee towards the port in Valetta, but even with the tourist season long over people were starting to peek cautiously out of their windows from the floors above them.

“See what I mean? Either military training or you’re some kind of Mob trained prodigy,” Eames said as he peeled away from the wall. They walked briskly down the sloping cobbled streets of the capital city towards the port.

“You do realize that gun ownership in America is relatively high compared to Europe?” Arthur queried as they hesitated for a second at another intersection. He peered down the narrow street, glancing first for foot traffic and then quickly canvassing the windows of the stone buildings rising on each side. He motioned silently with his hand and they continued.

“Yes, Darling. I know you Yanks have quite the sentimentalism for your firearms. But most Americans don’t know to shoot out street lamps so they can spot a muzzle flare,” Eames replied with an assessing smile.

“Maybe I was a boy scout. Always be prepared,” Arthur said with a smile full of promise.

“Ahh, I must have missed the Paramilitary maneuvers and firearms merit badge,” Eames replied, deadpan. Arthur laughed.

They turned another corner and spotted two policemen down the block, walking towards them. Before Arthur could react, Eames threw his arm around Arthur’s shoulder and stumbled exaggeratedly.

“Yes, I know the port is easier to find when all those plebeian tourists in those giant cruise ships are here,” Eames said in a much louder voice, his words slurring slightly. “But I happen to like it here when we’ve got the place to ourselves.”

“What are you doing?” Arthur hissed. “Don’t tell them where we’re going!”

“Play along, we’re just rich, drunk tourists,” Eames murmured back against Arthur’s ear. He doubted the cool evening air had anything to do with Arthur’s full body shudder.

“We’re still lost,” Arthur replied petulantly, loud enough for the police to overhear this time. One of them smiled and pointed towards a sign bolted into the stonework of the corner building. It had an outline of a ship on it.

“Oh, how ridiculous, there were signs, darling,” Eames said, sounding extremely put out. The other officer laughed and shooed them off. As they stumbled down the rest of the block, Arthur’s arm snaked up to wrap around Eames’s waist. Eames didn’t bother suppressing his grin when he felt Arthur’s fingers curl under the bottom hem of his shirt.

\---

Eames didn’t ask the Cobbs or any of the other people he knew Arthur had worked with. It was far more entertaining to guess and see their varying reactions, judging how close he was to the truth or whether Arthur had even told them in the first place.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to know Arthur’s history; he was insatiably curious what confluence of events had occurred to produce such a brilliant, professional and gorgeous point man. But getting Arthur to tell him himself would be far more satisfying. He desired for Arthur to want to tell him. That prize was far dearer than any anecdote or trivia Cobb might be able to tell him.

And then one summer night, what Arthur wanted became irrelevant. It broke Eames’s heart to watch the aftermath.

\---

“Arthur Lauren,” Eames mused, trying the name out. Arthur still hadn’t looked up from staring down at Nash’s model of the dreamscape they were working on. He’d been focused and attentive on their new architect’s work at nearly every step of the job. Eames would never voice the thought out loud, but he’d wondered if Arthur’s almost obsessive attention to detail wasn’t partially relief to have something other than Cobb to focus on. He’d heard from Giselle, another architect, about the fiasco of a job two months previous. ‘Attempt’ had been the key word as Arthur had spent more time making sure Cobb wasn’t falling apart than doing his job as Point.

“Your last name is a girl’s name?” Nash asked Arthur skeptically. It was all Eames could do to contain the derisive snort at their architect’s gullibility.

“Yes, my boy,” Eames cut in smoothly before Arthur can correct him. “Dearest Arthur here is the illegitimate love child of the fashion designer Ralph Lauren. It’s where he gets his spectacular taste in suits and handsome Jewish looks.” The look Arthur cut him was half fond and mildly exasperated.

“Ignoring for a moment that his fetish for khaki is rather appalling and his tendency to pair plaid with tweed would make you a more likely candidate for his misbegotten offspring. If I was really his illegitimate child, wouldn’t my given name be something other than Lauren?” Arthur looked up and arched one dark brow at Eames. His bemused expression vanished the moment Dom walked back into the room, still talking on the phone with their client. His eyes tracked their extractor’s progress across the room, his expression almost resigned.

Dom clicked his phone shut and tossed it onto a table, clearly frustrated. Arthur shot Eames an indecipherable look before walking over to talk to their extractor.

\---

They managed to get the job done, barely. Nash was a competent enough architect. Not the best that Eames had ever worked with, but better than some by far. He wasn’t all that surprised that it was Cobb that nearly ruined the job.

Just as they’d gotten their mark into the bar, Cobb had looked outside and completely dropped character. He’d gone pale and Eames was relatively sure the man might have bolted right then had Arthur not been right there to push him towards their mark.

Dom had been sweating, nervous and stuttering when he’d finally started talking. The mark had been instantly suspicious and they’d nearly lost the job right there. Fortunately Eames was an excellent improviser and had busted into their conversation, taking over Dom’s role.

Afterwards, as they’d been packing up their equipment, he’d overheard Arthur and Dom arguing about a female projection. Eames didn’t know who they were talking about but he was sure of one thing. He’d taken this job because of Arthur, but this was the last job he intended to work with Dominic Cobb.

A knock at Eames’ hotel door interrupted his brooding over the near disaster earlier in the day. Eames dropped the shirt he’d been folding into his suitcase and went to the door of his suite. Pulling out his gun, he checked the safety glass before opening the door.

“Shouldn’t you be minding your ward right now?” Eames asked dryly as he opened his door. Arthur glared at him, although there was no real heat behind the expression. Eames holstered his gun and gestured for Arthur to enter.

“Dom’s talking to his lawyers again on the phone in his room. He could be in there for hours.” Arthur came into the room and made straight for Eames’s minibar. He pulled out several small bottles of scotch and mixed two drinks.

“I never pegged you for a scotch man,” Eames said as he accepted the proffered drink.

“There are a lot of things you don’t know about me.” Arthur’s tone was lighter than Eames had heard in weeks. Arthur sprawled down on the couch, looked more relaxed than Eames had seen him in months.

“Yes, indeed. Very mysterious, you’re quite the enigma, Arthur.” Eames paused to sip at his drink, savoring the smoky flavor of the alcohol. Arthur looked at him consideringly, a small smile tugging at his lips. He set his drink down and reached for Eames’ a moment later.

Eames returned the smile as he stepped slowly into open splay of Arthur’s legs. He leaned down and hesitated, bracing himself on the back of the couch and watching Arthur. Arthur arched up slightly, reaching up to grip Eames’s button down and pull him down the rest of the way. He kissed Eames hungrily, his mouth falling open quickly under Eames’s. Eames bit Arthur’s lower lip softly before pulling back, kissing the side of his mouth one last time before stepping back.

Swiping his drink from the side table, Eames sat down on the couch beside Arthur. He crossed his legs so that his foot brushed against Arthur’s leg and draped his arm across the back of the couch.

“What do you think of remote dreaming?” Arthur asked after a brief silence. He’d leaned his head back onto Eames’s arm and was staring consideringly at him.

“You mean break into someone’s dreams without the PASIV? And from a different location? I’d say that’s damn near impossible,” Eames replied after a moment’s deliberation. His fingers toyed with the wisps of Arthur’s hair that had started to come loose from all the pomade.

“No, with a PASIV.” Arthur clarified. “I was thinking about the potential of networking multiple devices, so that only one person has to be there to put the mark to sleep. That way if something goes wrong, the entire team isn’t put at risk. And we could extract from more secure locations.”

“I think that’s a fascinating idea, but I wouldn’t have the faintest idea of how to go about doing it. I imagine we’d have to accumulate quite a bit of capital to develop the technology and network to support that. Not to mention that despite having worked in this business since nearly the beginning I still haven’t the faintest idea how that device actually works,” Eames mused with a wry smile. “I suppose the more important question would be, why are you suddenly concerned about moving your team to a remote location?”

Arthur’s gaze slide broke away from Eames’s and he sipped at his drink, refusing to comment.

“I see, I suppose this has nothing to do with Dom’s little mental breakdown on the job earlier, does it?” Eames asked cautiously. His fingers stilled in Arthur’s hair as suspicion dawned about the direction of their conversation.

“Eames,” Arthur said warningly. “You don’t understand. He’s. He’s struggling and it’s not easy.”

“I can definitely see that it’s not easy,” Eames agreed. “For either of you. Why do you have to stay? Why don’t you come to Barcelona with me?”

“I can’t. I dragged him and Mal into this business. Back when I-”

“No,” Eames cut Arthur off, standing up and pacing over to the window angrily. “You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to tell me that you’re not coming with me and then decide that you’re finally going to tell me something about your history.”

“Eames,” Arthur started, his voice sounding strained.

“Don’t. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t be nice to me, tell me things about yourself, kiss me and then refuse to come with me. Not because you’ve decided to protect someone beyond all ability to help. I don’t want to be the one who has to fill in all the information for your obit when Cobb gets you killed.”

Eames stared blindly out of the darkened window, listening as the door clicked softly behind Arthur.

\---

Eames might have decided to never work with an unstable man like Cobb again, but even he wasn’t stupid enough to say no when an opportunity like Inception knocked. Mostly he was surprised that Cobb was still alive. He wasn’t all that surprised to discover that Arthur was still working with Cobb. Nor was he surprised to discover that Cobb had burned through most of his previous contacts, so it had been up to Eames to find them a chemist. He’d only silently raised an eyebrow at Arthur when he’d discovered just how freshly recruited Ariadne had been.

He called Giselle after their first meeting with Saito to confirm his suspicions.

“Eames, you fox, what do you want?” she asked when she picked up.

“I can’t call to find out how an old acquaintance is doing?” Eames asked innocently. He tucked himself further into a corner of their abandoned warehouse, in case any of the other team members came looking for him.

“The last three times you called me were about a job, to get out of a jam and to find out information about Arthur. In that order, mind you,” Giselle replied cheerfully. Eames remembered why he always liked her, no nonsense.

“Ah yes, speaking of dearest Arthur, our favorite pinstriped automaton. What can you tell me about his mildly demented charge, Cobb? Any news?” There was a long silence on the line and Eames wondered if Giselle had hung up on him.

“He’s bad news, Eames. I know you swore off working with him before, but you should heed your own advice. I heard he got Nash killed and Winton disappeared after working a job with him about six months ago,” Giselle’s tone held none of the frivolity from before.

“Funny thing, that,” Eames started.

“You’re already working with him, aren’t you?” Giselle asked, clearly already knowing the answer. She sighed. “It goes without saying, but look out for yourself. He’ll burn you without a second thought. Mika’s been saying he sold Nash out to Cobol after their job went south. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but we’ve all seen what he’s been like these past few years.”

“I figured it must be bad when he recruited green blood for an architect,” Eames replied.

“Most of us have conveniently lost his number,” Giselle confirmed.

“Well, thanks for the update.” Eames exchanged a few more pleasantries and rang off.

\---

What threw Eames was that Arthur seemed no worse for the wear. He smiled at Eames’s flirtations and seemed almost cheerful at some of the banter they engaged in. Despite the things he had heard from Giselle and others, Arthur seemed to be taking Cobb’s slow-motion implosion with aplomb.

Until they encountered Fisher’s militarized subconscious and Cobb blamed Arthur. Eames quickly realized that much like their last job together, Arthur had spent more time managing Cobb than doing the job he was supposed to be doing. This time to potentially deadly effect as Cobb had neglected to tell any of them they’d been so heavily sedated they’d fall into limbo if they died in dreamspace.

As they raced against the clock and Saito’s slowing pulse, Eames wondered why he thought this had been worth it. Then Arthur had smiled down at him, fondly telling him to <i>Go to sleep, Mr. Eames</i> and he’d momentarily forgotten his concerns.

\---

Eames was bone tired when he trudged back into his flat in Barcelona. He’d forgone returning to Mombasa, tired finally of the dry heat. The subway from the airport had been predictably crowded; growing more packed the closer to downtown he’d gotten. He’d gotten off at Placa Sant Jaume and made the 6 block trek down narrow cobbled roads in the Gothic District to his top floor flat.

After trudging up three flights of stairs, Eames nearly ignored the box sitting in front of his front door. He noticed the handwriting on the address label as he was setting the box on his kitchen counter and paused. The package was from Arthur, which raised some interesting questions.

Eames had flown straight from LAX to Atlanta to Barcelona. The shipping label said it had been sent out from Sydney several days ago, when they had first put the final parts of the Fisher job into motion. Eames wasn’t particularly concerned that Arthur had been able to predict exactly where he’d go after a job, the man knew him fairly well after all. It did raise his curiosity about what was in the box, since Arthur hadn’t mentioned it or given any indication to expect it.

Eames picked up a knife and wandered back towards his bedroom with the box. Sitting down on his bed, he cut open the box to reveal a piece of paper and small device beneath. To his surprise the device had an IV attached to it, much like the PASIV. Turning the paper over, Eames noted Arthur’s neat writing on the paper:

A wild patience has taken me this far…

But really I have nothing but myself

To go by; nothing

Stands in the realm of pure necessity

Except what my hands can hold.

There were no instructions, but then again, Eames supposed he never needed any when it came to Arthur. He pulled the device out of the box, attached the IV to his wrist and laid back on the bed. He turned over the small object, looking for an obvious button, like the PASIV had. He smiled when he spotted the simple switch on the side.

\---

Eames was walking down a long hallway when the door to his right burst open.

“Quick, get in here before they notice you,” Arthur motioned, grabbing Eames’s arm and dragging him physically into the room.

“Darling, don’t you just look absolutely adorable,” Eames exclaimed, motioning towards Arthur’s clothes. Arthur was dressed in baggy pants and a tight printed t-shirt.

“So it worked,” Arthur said with a brilliant grin.

“What did? Your Halloween costume?” Eames asked, running his hand down Arthur’s exposed arm.

“Don’t be obtuse, Eames. The remote dreaming, it worked,” Arthur’s grin dimmed only marginally in annoyance.

“Ah, of course. That explains the clothes,” Eames replied, pulling away. “I’m quite a bit more fuzzy headed right now than I normally am at the beginning of a dream, did we just start? Where am I right now?”

“You don’t remember deciding to test this?” Arthur asked, concern filtering into his voice. “You should be in your apartment in Barcelona right now, if you used the device where I sent it.”

“And where are you?” Eames asked distractedly, trying to clear his head.

“Well, not in your apartment,” Arthur said evasively.

“How did you know when I was going to activate my part of the device?” Eames asked. “You can’t have been under the whole time waiting.”

“Oh, no. I had a general idea of what time you would be getting back and the device is wirelessly networked in with mine, so it notifies me the moment it powers up,” Arthur replied.

“Brilliant,” Eames muttered, offhand. “So why are we in…a dorm room?” If anything, Arthur started to look even more uncomfortable.

“This was my dorm room, I thought I’d show it to you,” Arthur offered tentatively. “If you were interested.”

“You want to show me your college dorm room?” Eames asked blankly. Before they’d seen each other again on the Fisher job, they hadn’t spoken in nearly a year.

“This is where I first hacked into the Department of Defense’s serves and found out about Project Somnacin.” Arthur gestured towards what looked like a home built computer rig. The thing took up nearly an entire wall of the dorm room. He walked over towards the closet and pulled the door open, revealing an entryway into another room.

“This was the warehouse where I built my first PASIV device two years later using the schematics I’d stolen,” Arthur said after he’d ushered Eames through the doorway. The place looked like a rundown storage facility for extra computer and industrial parts. Eames told Arthur as much.

“Yeah, I didn’t have a lot of resources to work with back in the early days. I met Dom at an academic conference on dreaming and reality hacking about a year after that. He was presenting a paper about lucid dreaming so I offered to let him test his theories out.” Arthur paused and for a moment a shadow passed over his expression.

“Dom made his own choices. You can’t change that, Arthur,” Eames said, wrapping his hand around the back of Arthur’s neck.

“I know,” Arthur murmured, leaning into the touch. Eames sighed in frustration.

“Has anything really changed? This technology is amazing, what you’ve done here is brilliant. But you can’t construct this world; tell me all of these things. Only to leave me sitting alone in my flat,” Eames said sadly. Before Arthur could reply, Eames materialized a gun for himself and shot himself in the head.

\---

Eames felt bleary when he woke from the dream, much more so than usual. He wondered if that would end up being normal for the remote device or a side effect of being Arthur’s guinea pig. He tossed the device onto the bedside stand and went to take a shower.

Eames emerged from the shower to the sound of someone pounding on the front door. Eames had a pretty good idea of who it was, so he grabbed the device from his bedroom before going to answer the door.

“Who said anything about leaving you alone?” Arthur demanded angrily by way of greeting as soon as the door opened. Eames simply tossed his device back to him instead of answering. Arthur stopped, looking down at the tangle of tubes and metal clutched in his hands.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he finally said in a small voice. “Originally it was about protecting Dom, finding a way of keeping him safe. But I started being interested in remote dreaming in its own right because of its tactical uses for our jobs, not as a way of leaving any one particular person behind.”

“So you’re staying, then?” Eames asked with a tentative smile.

“If you’ll still have me. I’m done working with Dom. I told him before we got to Paris that Inception was the last job.”

Eames reached out to pull Arthur slowly forward by his belt loops. Arthur tucked into the curve of Eames’s shoulder with a mumble, his arms snaking around his waist.

“Excellent, first order is a nap. Later we can go to the café down the street and get some tapas. The little old lady who runs the place there has been teasing me for years about the mysterious man with no past I’ve been positively tortured over.” Eames delivered the missive with a wistful smile, staring up at the ceiling. Arthur laughed and simply tightened his hold.

“That sounds like an excellent plan,” Arthur said. “And what type of past do you think this mysterious man comes from?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Raised by wolves? Escaped from prison,” Eames mused as he took Arthur by the hand and led him towards the bedroom. “Maybe we can come up with something together.”

**Author's Note:**

> The poem in the story is an excerpt from Integrity by Adrienne Rich. I tried to fulfill the original prompt as best I could, but a list of single words turned out to be surprisingly hard to draw together into a coherent story. So I hope you liked this.


End file.
